1.4.1-Aphraseremains
Brick!Club 1.4.1 A meeting between mothers In which Fantine once again proves herself not to be the best judge of character. In the ten months since Tholomyes abandoned her, Fantine’s undergone some obvious changes. She’s starting to lose the qualities she had when we first met her: “a line of sadness, like the beginning of cynicism, ran down her right cheek” – it’s like Tholomyes has poisoned her with his cynicism. She’s lost her faithful love, too – understandably! – her heart is “hardened towards Tholomyes” as she’s heard so many people say how normal and unsurprising Tholomyes’ indifference is (though obviously she loves Cosette! And she’s still pretty trusting here! But still, there’s a contrast between how she was when we first met her and the person she’s having to become). The hair and teeth are being emphasized again – this is candlesticks levels of foreshadowing here – but this time because they can’t be seen, her hair’s tucked away under a cap and she’s not smiling so her teeth are hidden. Still, she may have changed but she’s still keeping her head above water. I love the line “Fantine, as we shall see, possessed great courage in the face of life”. I do wish Hugo would stop with the “she’d done wrong”, but, well, 19th century, and it’s not surprising that that’s what Fantine would be thinking and what she knows the people around her would think too. And having her say it would probably help with keeping his readership sympathetic to her, I suppose. And the four women immediately ceased to be friends once their lovers were gone. sigh. It’s not surprising, it’s basically how Hugo described their friendship working, but it makes me sad. Girls can be genuinely friends with each other, Hugo! It happens all the time! They don’t need to forget about each other immediately! But they do, because Fantine needs to be isolated and alone for the plot. Tholomyes also poisoned her by causing her to “despise her former calling”, which is why she’s having to go back to Montreuil-sur-mer to find work. But like many of the terrible people in this book, Tholomyes goes on to happiness and success. Under Louis-Philippe, Hugo takes care to mention, to put us on the side of the revolution with the thought that the worst person ever prospers in his regime, I guess. That’s a pretty standard tactic in fiction aimed towards promoting social reform, really, having the bad people win and the good people suffer, to incite the reader’s outrage and desire for change. Dickens, as well as a lot of other Victorian novelists, does the same thing sometimes (and then several people in my Victorian lit class decided that Dickens’s sentimental and furious depictions of children suffering tragically just meant that he hated children, cause why else would he have bad things happen to them, right? sigh. People with analysis like that make my head hurt). So, Madame Thenardier is watching Eponine and Azelma play, and so seeming “likeable at the moment”. I like Hugo’s statement that Fantine might have had her confidence shaken enough not to leave Cosette with her if she’d been standing. But unfortunately she’s sitting and that, combined with her maternal affection for her own kids, makes her seem like a good candidate to leave a child with after only having known her five minutes. (I feel like there’s something to be said here about the symbolism of the vehicle the children are playing on – “our ancient social order is filled with similar encumbrances, surviving for no other reason” – but I don’t quite know what.) I’m interested that Fantine sensibly lies here and claims to be a widow – what’s stopping her doing that in Montreuil-sur-mer? Like, I get that being a widowed mother might cause her problems looking for work too, but it seems like she thinks none of the people who knew her before she left would believe her? What am I missing? But, anyway, she leaves Cosette with some of the other worst people ever, because this book is sort of endlessly tragic. (Also, I like the little bit about weird diminutives. Because so many diminutives are really really confusing, both the ones people come up with on their own and the ones actually traditionally associated with specific names! Kit for Christopher! Peg for Margaret! Just as examples.) Commentary Pilferingapples I never got why she didn’t lie about widowhood either! I mean, it’s not like people weren’t dying of a sever case of The 19th Century just all over the place. I give credit to Hugo for writing the acquaintances in the last section as, yeah, okay, acquaintances. There was never any sign of real closeness between them. And while girls CAN be friends with each other, they/we can also just know people and get along without needing there to be a super close or even kinda close bond? That’s definitely what I got from those four. So I accept the vanishing of that group, but oh, Fantine, I am SO SORRY you had no one else. Sarah1281 (reply to Pilferingapples) It’s not even that they are just not close. The others, particularly Favorite, seemed to really resent Fantine and have it out for her. If people I only net once treated ne like they treated Fantine I would seriously hate them and apparently these women spent quite a bit of time together. Columbina I was wondering about why she didn’t just lie in Montreuil-sur-mer too, but I’m guessing it’s just because she’s probably not a very good liar, and that would take a lot of lying. (What was his name? How did he die? What did he do for a living? Where was he from? Oh, my sister lives there, did he know so and so?)